The prototype Oculus Touch controllers. Oculus says the final controllers will be quite similar.

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

The demo room for sit-down, Xbox One controller demos

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

CEO Brendan Iribe shows off the consumer Rift.

Sam Machkovech

Sliding the Rift on.

Sam Machkovech

Adjusting the fit using velcro straps on the sides.

Sam Machkovech

Getting acclimated to the Oculus Touch.

Sam Machkovech

Punch, punch, it's all in the mind.

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

I'll just reach over here...

Sam Machkovech

With the rise of the new virtual reality spurred on by Oculus these last three years or so, many have worried that playing behind an opaque headset will be more isolating and withdrawn than the experience of playing on a couch or even a monitor at your desk. After fiddling with a virtual room full of toys alongside another Rift user playing from the next room—using real hand and arm movements made virtual by the Oculus Touch controller—I have to say those fears are probably overblown. If anything, sharing a virtual space with someone else in this way made me feel more engaged and connected with another player than simply playing online or on the same TV.

Further Reading

The E3 demo was the first time those outside Oculus have been able to use the finalized consumer version of the Oculus Rift after years of using dev kits and prototypes. As far as audio and sound go, the experience seemed quite similar to the Crescent Bay prototype I first tried last September. The resolution is high enough to avoid the "screen door effect" of the Oculus dev kits, and the head tracking is rock-solid enough to make you feel like you're simply looking at a complete space that fully surrounds you. Oculus isn't talking exact specs, but the company did say the field of view has been expanded somewhat from the 100 degrees on the development kits.

The biggest changes in the consumer version are to the form factor. Oculus isn't discussing the specific weight, but the headset is incredibly light—perhaps about a pound—and easy to pick up with one hand. Unlike the dev kits, which are practically welded to your face with these elastic straps, the consumer Rift slides over your head like a baseball cap. A rigid spine wraps around the top of your skull and hovers the display just in front of your eyes.

A couple of velcro straps on this spine can be easily adjusted for a tight fit, a process that feels much more natural than the knob twisting and sliding of Sony's Morpheus. And the thick cable that weighed down the dev kits is now a single, unobtrusive cable that dangles out from the side of the display. Two small headphones flip down to provide the positional audio for the experience. The sound quality on these isn't great, but they can be replaced with a high-end set of ear cups if you want something with better fidelity (and more weight).

If you're just familiar with the cumbersome dev kits, you'll probably be amazed at how much the consumer Rift simply gets out of the way and lets you enjoy the feeling of being in a virtual space. You never quite forget it's on your head, but the distractions of what's going on in your eyes and ears are enough to make it a minor part of your perception, like the feeling of wearing a slightly heavy hat and pair of sunglasses. It's hard to know for sure after just a few minutes of demos, but it's easy to envision wearing this headset comfortably for hour-long play sessions.

Hands across VR

Our Oculus demo started with a sit-down experience using the included Xbox One controller. I tried out a hockey game that put me behind a goalie mask, tasked with following the puck and tapping a trigger to block shots as they came in. It was a decent introduction to the concept of being in a first-person VR experience but nothing that special.

Insomniac's Edge of Nowhere felt more like a full game, with a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective that you control simply by looking around rather than tilting an analog stick. This felt completely natural, but it was inherently a bit limiting. There was no way to turn the camera around a full 360 degrees, so the action mainly moved forward in a straight line with occasional short trips down diagonal paths. The VR environment surrounding me was suitably spooky, though, especially when descending a deep cavern with huge spiders chittering about the darkness on the glittering walls.

The highlight of our time with the Rift came when we were taken to a soundproofed, heavily air-conditioned room to try out the Oculus Touch controller prototypes. Holding them feels a bit like holding a Wii Nunchuk controller—complete with a thumbstick and trigger buttons—but with an added ring encircling the finger area.

That ring allows cameras to track your hands and sensors to track your fingers, but it also allows you to simply let go of the controller. If you open up your palms and spread your fingers, the controller stays in place, balanced against your palm and resting on the crook of your thumb and pointer finger. This means you don't have to maintain a constant fist-like grip, as you do when holding the wands that provide hand tracking on the PlayStation Move or VR controllers.

Sensors in the ring are what the Oculus Touch controller uses to track finger movements, though this feature was a little touchy in our demo. While the position tracking of our hands in virtual space was very fine and precise, finger tracking seemed to snap between an "open" and "closed" position without much refinement. What's more, aside from the thumb and pointer, the three other fingers only moved as a single unit in virtual space. The reaction to finger movements often felt just slightly delayed in the virtual world as well.

This kind of setup now costs half as much as it did a year ago.

Who's that behind you? Oculus's prying eyes, that's who!

Oculus

If you want to get your hands on a Rift ASAP, better plan to camp out at Best Buy

Now that's what I call a open platform. Nyuk nyuk nyuk

This is it... the consumer Oculus Rift.

Sam Machkovech

Sam Machkovech

These are minor quibbles, though, for a controller that finally provides Oculus' solution to the "where are my hands" problem. In my demo, I was able to punch at a tetherball, bounce a ping-pong ball on a paddle, juggle blocks in my hands, aim and fire a slingshot by pulling it back and letting go, control an RC car with the thumbstick, and even throw and catch a boomerang. I did it all naturally, just by moving my hands and opening and closing my grip as I would in the real world.

I've been able to do similar things in other VR demos from the likes of Sony and Valve, but Oculus might just take the cake as far as sheer comfort and natural feel. Using the triggers and sensors to grip and point took a few minutes of getting used to, but after that it's easy to forget the light controller is really there. I felt like I was just using my hands rather than poking at the world with magical wands as in those other demos.

The only real problem with the Touch controllers, as it stands now, is that they're not the default for the Oculus Rift. CEO Brendan Iribe told us the Touch controllers would be added as an optional accessory slightly after the launch of the Rift, available by the end of the first half of 2016. The Touch controllers also currently require a second tracking camera to work, though Iribe says they are working to get that down to one by launch. And while Iribe insisted that the included Xbox One controller was the best interface for many VR games, he also suggested that developers that have just gotten their hands on the Touch prototypes would need more time to make compelling software that uses them. Let's hope they do so quickly, because being able to use your hands fills in an important missing piece in the VR experience.

Sharing a space

While seeing and using my hands in the latest Oculus demo was impressive enough, the presence of another person in the virtual space was even more revelatory. Though my guide was standing in the next room, in virtual space his avatar was right there with me, appearing as a floating wireframe head and pair of hands across the table. We could hear each other talk through the Rift's built-in microphone and flipdown headphones. Every time he spoke, his virtual mouth showed a robotic distortion pattern like something out of an old sci-fi film.

More than anything else I've seen yet, sharing a virtual space like this seems like the killer app for Oculus. Even without any specific game to play, just being able to play with a virtual table full of toys with another person provided plenty of fun.

Everything about this shared play felt completely natural. When my guide handed me a ray gun or a slingshot to fire at some targets, I simply grabbed it out of his hand. When we wanted to play some table tennis, we cleared off the table with a sweep of our hands and hit the ball back and forth a few times. When he waved at me or offered a fist bump, I waved and fist-bumped back without really thinking about it. When he pushed a button and made my avatar minuscule, I cowered a bit at his ability to throw gigantic toys my way.

Coming out of the headset and returning to an empty, isolated room was a bit shocking after sharing such an intimate space. The only real limitation was the inability to walk around the space together—the Rift's camera-based tracking system is still limited to a tracking area that's only a few square feet. Still, the demo had me really intrigued to see what game developers do with the idea of having multiple people get together and manipulate virtual spaces.

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl